Tag Archives: waterloo

I don’t know about you but the music that I really enjoy is the music that was popular when I was in Junior High, High School and College. For me that period spanned the years 1971-1983.

It was a turbulent era. The Vietnam War was ending and Nixon was resigning due to the Watergate break in cover-up despite going to China and establishing the beginning of detente with the Soviet Union. Assassination attempts on political leaders, successful and unsuccessful, were common. Two attempts were made on Gerald Ford. Prime Minister Aldo Moro of Italy and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt victim fell to terrorists while President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II were felled by bullets which did not prove fatal.

The Cold War was tense despite the beginning of detente and signing of Nuclear Weapons treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Middle East was in turmoil even as Egypt and Israel hammered out a peace treaty withe the help of US President Jimmy Carter. In Iran a revolution swept the Shah of Iran out of power bringing the Ayatollah Khomeini into power. The seizure of the US Embassy and the 444 day hostage crisis punctuated by a failed rescue attempt demoralized the United States. In October 1983 247 Marines were killed in a terror bombing of their barracks at the Beirut International Airport.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan which would become their Vietnam, as part of the Cold War this lead to US involvement with Mujahideen. The US support with the Mujahideen was a fateful alliance that brought the Taliban to prominence and introduced the world to Osama Bin Laden. The Cubans were fighting in Angola while the Anti-Apartheid movement struggled with its leader Nelson Mandela languishing in a South African prison.

High profile terrorist attacks became common. The Palestinian terrorist group Black September killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. European terrorist organizations including the Red Brigades, the Red Army Faction and Bader Meinhof gang, the Irish Republican Army and the American Weather Underground provided a constant string of terrorist attacks even as Middle Eastern terrorist groups highjacked airliners in daring fashion, matched at times by equally rescues by Israeli and German anti-terrorist units.

The American and the world economies were in a state of recession much of the era. There was a major recession, the American auto industry needed bailouts, inflation was running in double digits as was the unemployment rate. The dollar was weak and OPEC wreaked havoc on world oil markets with embargoes in 1973 and 1979.

However it was music in the 1970s and early 1980s that provided a diversion for many people looking for respite from all the bad news that echoed around the airwaves and in the newspapers. Thankfully there wasn’t a 24 hour cable news cycle yet otherwise people would have probably been jumping off of buildings. It was the heyday of AM Top 40 type stations and the beginning of rock oriented FM music stations. Kasey Kasem gave voice to the hits with American Top 40. As for me I had countless 45s and LPs of my favorite groups and artists.

I listened Doctor Donald D Rose of KFRC in San Francisco and my car, a 1966 Buick LeSabre 400 had a retro-fitted 8-Track tape player and speakers.

Great groups and artists ruled the pop and rock airwaves and the era produced some of the best rock, pop, R&B, soul, country-rock, disco and new-wave music ever done. It really was an amazing era both in quality and diversity of music .

It was not “message music” like much 60’s music but focused on entertainment. Power groups like Journey, Starship, REO Speedwagon and Boston made power ballads, while AC/DC and KISS shocked and entertained at the same time. Groups like the Blondie, the Eagles, Chicago, Paul McCartney and Wings, Abba and the Commodores dominated the pop charts while individual artists such as Olivia Newton-John, Elton John, Carly Simon, John Denver, Lionel Ritchie, Barry Manilow and others satisfied the more mainstream pop crown. Disco enjoyed a brief heyday with the popularity of Saturday Night Fever and the Bee Gees. R&B enjoyed a renaissance due to the unlikely duo of the Blues Brothers who helped re-launch the careers of Aretha Franklin, Johnny Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway and a host of others. Country crossovers became big with Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and Glenn Campbell leading the way. As the 80’s came along new groups and styles were introduced including New Wave and Rap. It was music that helped us through those times.

I listen to that music all the time and remember those turbulent days well. It certainly wasn’t the fact that things were great in the world. That being said despite bad news there was still some sense of that things would work out okay. Music helped provide part of that sense of hope. It was an escape and the music of that time is still with us. Many of those those groups haven’t gone away and people look back with fondness to the music of the era even as the artists age and pass away.

Here are some of my favorites with links to the videos, they are in no particular order nor are the representative of all the groups that I have in my library of CDs and DVDs, but I enjoy the heck out of them. Have fun and enjoy.

I’m back in North Carolina after a quick trip home and despite a number of things that I want to write about just feel like I want to chill out tonight. I have been doing some reading of late, I finished a couple of books recently on religion and public life and I am continuing to read Eric Hoffer’s classic primer on the psychology of mass movements The True Believer and re-reading the first volume of Richard Evans trilogy on Nazi Germany The Coming of the Third Reich. I have also started a book that I picked up a few years back Roger Knight’s tome on the life of Admiral Horatio Nelson The Pursuit of Victory. But enough about reading this article is about music, the kind of music that I like.

Sometimes it is good just to chill out. I haven’t spent much time online this weekend and with the exceptions of checking the headlines I haven’t done much looking at the news the past couple of days.

Since driving throughEastern North Carolinahas become a big part of my life over the past year and one of the few benefits to driving is listening to the music that I enjoyed in high school and college. This is in large part due to dearth of interesting radio programming that exists in this part of the state. This article will be the fist of several dealing with some of my favorite songs and since I do a lot of driving between Virginia Beach and Camp LeJeune figured why not do a couple of articles about some of my favorite road music.

Sports radio, which is my default setting since I gave up AM Talk Radio afterIraqis in short supply. My local Virginia Beach ESPN Radio 94.1 only reaches toElizabethCityand the local ESPN AM stations in the Jacksonville-New Bern area are very limited in coverage being low power stations. I like NPR but there are wide gaps in coverage in this area and the weekend line up is not the most exciting and sometimes by my standards pretty lame. There are a plethora of low power “Christian” or “Gospel” stations as well as Country and Western stations along the route but I am not a big C&W fan and am definitely not a fan of what passes for music or preaching on the religious stations. There is one pretty good “Oldies” station, FM 107.9 WNCT inGreenvillethat has a nice selection and good coverage area but there I times that I want to be in control of my music. When I do get a new car when this tour is over and I don’t have to have to pay for two places to live I will get some kind of satellite radio system but for now I’ll make due with my collection of CDs especially the ones that I had made with collections of my favorite music. I know that I am dating myself with CDs but maybe I will eventually move all my music to the digital side of the house on my I-Phone someday but I’m too lazy and don’t want to spend the money until I have to actually do it, I think I remember doing the same with LPs, 45s and cassette tapes.

The music that I like was what was on the radio back when I rode the bus to junior high and high school and when I got my first car during my senior year of high school. I remember listening to the late “Doctor” Donald D Rose who had the morning show on KFRC San Francisco during the 1970s as well as the local Stockton AM station KJOY both of which were AM Top 40 stations. In college I would listen to Kasey Kasem’s American Top 40 on Saturday and Sunday mornings when making dough and doing food prep at Shakey’s Pizza.

Since I am a now a relic by the standards of young people having come of age in the 1970s and early 1980s my music taste reflects my era. Now I do like other music but my favorite is the music that I grew up with so here are a few links to music videos of some of my favorite groups and artists who still manage to keep me alert and focused behind the wheel as I travel the highways and byways ofEastern North Carolina.

I always like the Eagles and for driving music one must start with Take it Easy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL683aq49_Mwhich is a great driving song and relaxing at the same time as I start my trip on I-264 inVirginia Beach.

Of course driving in Hampton Roads is no picnic and Kenny Loggins Danger Zonehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwL5xmhJejQfrom the classic Naval Aviation movie Top Gun is a perfect song for traveling on our roads.

Olivia Newton’s John Magichttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7WPwH8Rd6gis a bit of a change of pace when I get snarled in traffic in Chesapeake or when I hit the Downtown tunnel in Norfolk depending on the route that I try to use to get out of the Hampton Roads metro area.

Judy says that I never tire of Abba; indeed I think I have almost every song and album that the Swedish super group ever recorded. I find that a lot of Abba songs are great road music and that Waterloohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj_9CiNkkn4the hit that launched them to stardom in 1972 has a nice feel at 70 mph on the US 17 bypass around Washington NC.

I always loved the big voice of the late Laura Branigan who died far too young of a brain aneurism in 2003, her song Gloria http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tVutw8rjFkis about a woman living in the fast lane and going a bit crazy in the process. The song remained on the Billboard “Hot 100” for 36 weeks in 1982. The song makes for great open country driving, especially when you have to pass someone doing 48 mph in a 60 plus zone just because they can.

Rod Stewart was a favorite back then and still is for me today and though he has done a lot of work lately with classic pre-rock and roll era songs I always liked his early work the best including Maggie May http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfWl1Fn-FrE&feature=related . This is a more recent concert version of the classic.

The music from the movie soundtrack of The Blues Brothers is always nice to drive to and when you are driving alone it is always good to know that Everybody needs Somebody to Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCTJeT2i9QU.

Let’s get this straight. I am not a Dallas Cowboys fan. In fact I just find football mildly interesting and I pretty much will watch it to keep from watching the talking heads on the cable news channels, home shopping networks, televangelists or the latest episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit Bucharest. However my favorite team was playing last night, actually my favorite team of the week, the Green Bay Packers who happened to be playing the Dallas Cowboys.

After having been subjected to the Cowboys up close and personal for 7 years in the Dallas Fort Worth area and having to suffer “America’s Team” about everywhere I go I spare no effort to root against them, even when they played the Red Army Team of Warsaw Pact back in the Cold War. Call me un-American but I think that any team that really believes that it is “America’s Team” is pretty arrogant and deserves to lose just for the principle of it.

Now please know that this is nothing personal against any former Cowboys players, one of my friends from High School played on their Super Bowl teams in the 1990s. Roger Staubach, Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith are all pretty cool and seem like generally nice people, so it is nothing personal against any Cowboys greats or even most of their fans including many that I know who are good people that pay their taxes, go to church and adore their kids except when they want something on Sunday afternoon that conflicts with the game. In fact my only issue with these wonderful people is their choice of football team. The team that was the first to make an away jersey its home jersey stretching the overdone western cliché “the good guys in the white hats” just a bit too far.

For years the Cowboys have labored under the illusion that they are a good football team. Now it is true that until this year under their now deposed Head Coach Wade Phillips won a lot of games but tended to choke in the playoffs having one just one playoff game this millennium or something like that. This year playing in the Temple of Doom or as it is better known the New Cowboys Stadium and Arcade they really believed that this was their year. They were going to be the first team to ever play and win the Super Bowl in their home stadium….well that was the hype. Unfortunately they forgot that they had to play 16 regular season games to get there. Now since a team usually needs to win 10-11 games to get a spot in the playoffs and the Cowboys had 11 last year I think that they really believed that all they had to do was show up and other teams would say “My God we’re playing America’s Team, we can’t win!” and then go back to their hotel rooms to get drunk and eat pork rinds while the Cowboys celebrated another well deserved win.

The mantra in Dallas was that the Cowboys were a great team, loaded with talent and potential destined for greatness like those that went before them. Even when they started losing they kept repeating this like if they just said it enough that it would be true. Each week they went out on the field and had their ass handed to them often by teams that were supposedly lesser quality and each week the mantra was repeated.

A Cowboys’ Fan in Green Bay (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

The only problem was that the other teams tended to show up and play good football and America’s Team failed to play good fundamental football. As my sophomore football line coach said “it’s the little things that count.” The Cowboys stopped playing good fundamentals on day one and by Sunday night when they were annihilated by the Packers they were just going through the motions. Guys were quitting on plays, failing to make blocks and getting called for incredibly dumb penalties. It was an embarrassment that professional football players were performing in this manner. Heck if the Army went to war that way we would have our ass handed to us in about 5 minutes by the Moldavian Army, even faster by Serbania or any of those other “Anians.” The Cowboys have been so bad the past few weeks that I think a College team from a less than elite conference could have beaten them.

The illusion crashed hard last night at the Packers pounded the Cowboys 45-7 and it wasn’t even that close. I watched the Cowboys players and they had quit. Wade Phillips looked like Napoleon at Waterloo except he couldn’t run away in a carriage as his Army dissolved. Now don’t get me wrong I think that as a head coach that Phillips was way overrated but appeared to be a nice guy. Everyone says that his players really liked him but if you ask me the way that they played they looked like they loathed him. It was like they were intentionally letting him down. If they liked him so much they picked one hell of a way to demonstrate their loyalty to him.

Last night I watched the Wade Phillips press conference. You hate to see a nice guy look like he did. He looked like he had lost his last best friend and his dog had run away with the couple next door. He was a beaten and depressed man. He had lost his ability to command and had to be fired by Cowboys Dictator and Cheerleader in Chief Jerry Jones. When Jones was interviewed last night he said what everyone knew, that the Cowboys had more than one problem and that not just a few changes would be made. The first change came today when Phillips was given his walking papers and Offensive Coordinator Jason Garrett was named the Interim Head Coach.

One hopes that for the integrity of the game that the Cowboys players and organization will get their act together. They are cheating their fans as well as the NFL and doing nothing for themselves. The first step to getting better is to admit that you suck and Jerry Jones basically said that last night and today. If the Cowboys are lucky and they pull themselves together they might eke out a couple of more wins but they will have to go through some really good teams to get them. I really don’t think that much can be down with this bunch of Cowboys, even when the Cowboys went 1-15 in the first year of the Jones-Johnson years they didn’t stop trying and even though they were a bad team they played with heart and character. This team shows none of that. I may not be a Cowboys fan but this team is dishonoring the Cowboy’s legacy and tradition. If Jones is smart he will dump half of these guys some even before the off season. The Cowboys’ culture which has been built on hype and ghosts of the past has to change. I think that Jones now gets to point as he said:

“I think there are a lot of people here that certainly are going to suffer and suffer the consequences, I’m talking within the team, players, coaches. They’ve got careers, and this is certainly a setback. I know firsthand what it is to have high expectations. I think that unquestionably our expectations were thinking we were something we weren’t. … But again, we have so many things that we need to correct and address as this game so vividly exposed and previous games have. So I’ve got a lot of work to do, a lot of decisions to make, and it’s not just one, two, three or four. There are several decisions. I think everybody in this country would agree there’s a lot wrong with this team. We’ve got to address them and certainly I’m the one to address them.”

Of course as the GM Jones needs to should some of the blame as he helped pick the players and the coaches. He also because of his cheer leading helped promote a culture of hype. He will need to get a strong coach and let him coach to make the Cowboys a winner again. I think that he gets it. In his post firing press conference admitted that he had “been in denial” for a number of games prior to this.

It will be interesting to some to see what happens in the coming weeks and months. Real Cowboy haters will love it and Cowboys fans will have to wear bags over their heads just to get through the games. Like them or loathe them the Cowboys need to get better for the good of the game.

I don’t know about you but the music that I really enjoy is the music that was popular when I was in Junior High, High School and College. For that period spanned the years 1971-1983. For those of that were alive back then it was a turbulent era, Vietnam was ending, Nixon was resigning due to the Watergate break in cover-up, assassination attempts both successful and unsuccessful were common, two attempts on Gerald Ford, Aldo Moro of Italy and Anwar Sadat of Egypt fell to terrorists and both Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II were felled by bullets which did not prove fatal. The Cold War was tense, the Middle East a mess, and the economy…well kind of like now in a lot of ways. There was a major recession the auto industry needed bailouts, inflation was running in double digits as was the unemployment rate, the dollar was weak and OPEC wreaked havoc on world oil markets. Jimmy Carter was ridiculed worldwide for his “malaise” speech and the Iranian revolution led by the Ayatollah Khomeini swept into power and with it the seizure of the US Embassy and the 444 day hostage crisis punctuated by a failed rescue attempt demoralized the United States.

The 444 Day Iranian Hostage Crisis Helped End the Carter Presidency

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan which became their Vietnam. In Lebanon 247 Marines were killed in the bombing of their barracks, Cubans were fighting in Angola and well. Terrorist groups killed Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics and the Red Brigades, the Bader Meinhof gang, the Weather Underground and the Irish Republican Army provided a constant string of terrorist attacks even as Middle Eastern terrorist groups highjacked airliners in daring fashion, matched at times by equally rescues by Israeli and German anti-terrorist units. As you can imagine there was a lot to be down about.

Gas Lines 1974

However with the passing of the 60’s the music of the 1970s and early 1980s provided a diversion for many people looking for respite from all the bad news that echoed around the airwaves and in the newspapers. Thankfully there wasn’t a 24 hour cable news cycle yet and had there been people would have probably been jumping off of buildings. As for me I had countless 45s and LPs of my favorite groups and artists, Doctor Donald D Rose of KFRC in San Fransisco was my favorite DJ and my car had a retro-fitted 8-Track tape player.

Today while much of the population gathered around TVs to watch NFL Wild Card playoff games, I needed some peace, so I started putting music DVDs on as the Abbess and I worked about the house. First was Blondie’s Greatest Hits and Abba Gold followed by the Eagle’s Farewell Tour I concert album.

Great groups and artists ruled the pop and rock airwaves and save for the disaster known as disco the 70’s and early 80’s produced some of the more memorable music of a generation. It was not “message music” like much of the music in the 60’s but focused on entertainment. Power groups like Journey, Starship, REO Speedwagon and Boston made power ballads, while AC/DC and KISS shocked and entertained at the same time. Groups like the Blondie, the Eagles, Chicago, Paul McCartney and Wings, Abba and the Commodores dominated the pop charts while individual artists such as Olivia Newton-John, Elton John, Carly Simon, John Denver, Lionel Ritchie, Barry Manilow and others satisfied the more mainstream pop crown. R&B enjoyed a renaissance due to the unlikely duo of the Blues Brothers who helped re-launch the careers of Aretha Franklin, Johnny Lee Hooker, Cab Calloway and a host of others. As the 80’s came along new groups and styles were introduced including New Wave and Rap. It was music that helped us through those times.

As I listened and watched I mentioned to the Abbess that I missed those times. It certainly wasn’t the fact that things were great in the world, but despite all of what was going on there was still some sense of that things would work out okay. Music helped provide part of that sense of hope, even disco as much as I would hate to admit that. It was an escape and the music of that time is still with us, somehow those groups haven’t gone away and people look back with fondness to the music of the era.

Here are some of my favorites with links to the videos, they are in no particular order nor are the representative of all the groups that I have in my library of CDs and DVDs, but I enjoy the heck out of them. Have fun and enjoy.

Welcome!

Zum Wohl!

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